The Great Environmental Showdown.

Hillary Clinton vs.

DonaldTrump

esa loves its plants and trees, so what better way to get to know how your possible next president feels about protecting those plants and trees, then via twitter? What, you don't twitter bro? It's 2016! And in a few short days, every American citizen will get to go to the ballots to voice their choice of who should be the next president of the United States of America. There are many issues and policies to consider as you make your decision, and what the candidate plans to do about the current environmental crisis, is definitely one of them.

So, according to their twitter accounts, Hillary Clinton is addressing climate change and Donald Trump is... claiming it doesn't exist?

Okay fine, it's just one crazy weird tweet, so let's dig a little bit deeper. According to ontheissues.org, he has been quoted as saying the, "EPA is killing energy companies; 1,000 years of clean coal", "Green energy is just an expensive feel-good for tree-huggers.", and "Wind energy projects are industrial monstrosities", which are all ridiculous embellished claims. Trump’s only statement (but still a very poorly worded statement because trump) on the subject of climate change or clean energy with any merit is that the US “invested in solar energy and it was a disaster.” In this statement, during the first presidential debate with Hillary, Trump was referring to the now bankrupt solar company Solyndra, which received 500 million dollars of stimulus money from Obama through the loan program known as the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Although this particular incident was a miss, the loan program as a whole created thousands of US jobs and was in total a profit to the American citizen. This single failed company doesn’t diminish the success that many other solar companies are seeing. A sight he can't seem to see with hisown businesses. It is painfully clear that Trump doesn't think climate change is an issue, green energy is a waste, and he'd rather keep feeding the planet toxins by completely backing the fossil fuels industry, despite the science out there clearly showing the planet is hurting. Thinkprogress stated that if Donald Trump is elected president, he plans to revoke both the Climate Action and Clean Power Plans, and will open federal land for gas and oil production. Not that you asked for my opinion, but I can't help but think that the insane changes to our ecosystems and countless scientists telling us we’re in trouble are better sources then a crazy yelling man detached from reality.

In the other corner of the ring we have Hillary Clinton, who not only tweeted climate change is real and urgent, but also spoke in Florida pledging "as President I'll do everything I can to help Florida get ready for and deal with climate change and create more clean, renewable energy jobs." According to ontheissuses.org, she wants America to be the 21st-century clean energy superpower, add extensive funding to alternative energy sources, and unlike Trump, wants to protect Obama's Clean Action Plan. Since Clinton actually comes from politics, we can take a look at her environmental stance throughout her political career. LCV (League of Conservation Voters) gives her a lifetime score of 82% on their National Environmental Scorecard. However, she has voted for offshore drilling and as mentioned by Grist supported fracking abroad. Oh, and the biggest plot twist of them all, in line with GreenPeace's statement, the Clinton Campaign has received more than 6.9 million dollars from the fossil fuel industry. Clinton's environmental plans and promises are basically, telling the oil industry, "you can't sit with us". Yet oil companies are supporting her with a whoooole lot of money. Either the multibillion dollar businesses aren’t very good at business or Hillary has told them something she hasn’t shared with the rest of us.

I’m going to take the fact that you’re still reading as a sign that you want to know what I think of the two. Well, if I had to choose a winner in this crazy showdown, it'd have to be Hillary. Yes, I'm skeptical on exactly how much environmental change she'll push for with her controversial history and her choice of the largest polluters in the world as her support group, but at least she has consistently acknowledged climate change is very much a thing, (which it is!!!) and that action needs to be taken by the future leader of our country. That's better than the oil loving, I want clean air but first I'll cut the regulations doing just that, man in the opposite corner.